“Rarely do we achieve such a completeness in the eyes of others…generally one’s sins get diluted slightly by some mitigating act. Perhaps there is someone to whom I have been without exception kind and selfless, though this person is not coming as quickly to mind. Don’t we generally stumble through life as ambiguous to others as we are to ourselves? Always hoping that they will assemble a portrait that in some way accords with out idealized (or at least compassionately understood) self. Multiple eyes gaze upon you — and in a lifetime of scrutiny from different angles, you are held up and turned in the light like a semiprecious stone, or perhaps a piece of fool’s gold, and over the years if not by one set of eyes but by all together your flaws are seen and your worth assayed. And is that it? Are we the sum of people’s conceptions of us?”
~Richard Todd, The Thing Itself
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